Flawed software will hobble the first of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighters to be called combat-ready, limiting the plane’s ability to drop bombs, share data with other aircraft and track enemy radar, Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg news service writes.
He noted that finding is from the Defense Department’s chief weapons tester found.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to declare its version of the F-35 (different from the version Canada hopes to buy) ready for limited combat as soon as July, according to the Bloomberg report.
More from Tony Capaccio’s article:
The plane “will finish with deficiencies remaining that will affect operational units,” Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of combat testing, said in an annual report on major weapons that was sent to Congress on Friday and obtained before its public release.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/article6992399.html#storylink=cpy
Meanwhile, Bill Sweetman at Aviation Week writes this on the F-35:
“If you don’t follow the defense business closely, then you can be excused for believing that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is in trouble,” a Lockheed Martin consultant wrote five years ago, a few weeks before the program office director was fired in disgrace. His replacement found that the published schedule was 3-4 years adrift from reality.
Today, you could be excused for thinking that most of the F-35’s troubles are behind it. The schedule set at the end of May 2013 may survive its second anniversary, a first for the program. The Marines will likely declare initial operational capability this year, come hell or high water, and the latter is unlikely to be an issue at Arizona’s MCAS Yuma. Progress reportedly is being made on sorting out the engine problem that caused last June’s runway fire.
